ISSN 0258–0802. LITERATÛRA 2007 49(5)

FROM THE POSTMODERN TO THE PRE-MODERN: MORE RECENT CHANGES IN LITERATURE, ART AND THEORY

Herbert Grabes Proffesor, Justus-Liebig-Universität

That literature, art and theory have changed accident, then, I might add, that the very term considerably since the early and more spectacular ‘postmodernism’ should have entered phase of postmodernity in the nineteen-sixties and awareness via Charles Jencks’s lucubrations seventies is too obvious to be overlooked. These on contemporary architecture, an essentially changes raise questions regarding their actual extent visual domain. Too great was the contrast and quality, their presumable causes and their already between the stylish late modernist Colour discernible consequences – three aspects to which Field paintings of American Abstract I will be directing your attention in the following Expressionism and the new presentation of remarks. banal objects of everyday use, such as Jasper First, then, the extent and quality of the Johns’s “Two Beer Cans” (1960) or Andy changes that can be observed in the domains Warhol’s “Brillo Box” (1964) as well as the of literature, art and theory: in order to let you foregrounding of the nature of such objects share my observations, I will have to draw at as mass products of consumer culture in least a rough sketch of the situation then and Warhol’s famously iconic “200 Campbell now: that is, of the state of play in the Soup Cans” (1962). What soon came to be nineteen-sixties and seventies as against the called “Pop Art” further included the situation obtaining from the nineteen-eighties integration of the sexy images of advertising, onwards. as in the paintings of Tom Wesselman, the In retrospect, the difference between the large-scale stylized imitations of comic-book new works of art and literature from the or cartoon-strip figures and objects and nineteen-sixties and those of the nineteen-fifties speech- or thought-balloons as represented seems so great that it is no wonder observers by Roy Lichtenstein, and Claes Oldenburg’s soon began speaking of a ‘postmodernism’, magnified plastic reproductions of icons of in the sense that ‘modernism’ seemed to be everyday consumable or utilitarian culture over. I would like to begin with the advent of (just think of his “Two Cheeseburgers with postmodernism in the domain of the visual Everything” from 1962). arts because it was especially here that the At the same time, the techniques of re- phenomenon was so unmistakably visible – no presentation were largely influenced by the use

42 and imitation of mechanical reproduction. While in the domain of postmodern art and Warhol, for instance, used acrylic paint and oil literature Pop Art seemed so spectacular in its paint to create the impression of silkscreen prints move beyond the previous limits of aesthetic or newspaper reproductions of photographs, taste that it appeared as another avant-garde Rauschenberg imitated the look of TV images, movement, in the domain of theory the re- Lichtenstein the raster screen appearance of placement of structuralism by poststructuralist comic-book frames as quotations from mass ideas and deconstruction meant a similarly culture, but they all emphasized the distance radical break with the previously dominant between that culture and their art by an trend. After 1977, when Jacques Derrida’s De alienation effect that was achieved via the la Grammatologie (1967) appeared in English extreme magnification involved in their very translation, deconstruction became the new large canvases. What nevertheless was orthodoxy. Yet even if poststructuralist thought surprising was how well the ubiquitous and looked like the theoretical base of postmodern banal images of mass culture were suited as literature and art, it has to be said that artists sujets for works of art. and writers had become postmodern even The literary equivalent to Pop Art was the earlier, or at least at the same time as the integration and refinement of the structural theorists. patterns of popular genre literature and the wide This is borne out by works from the use of the clichés of everyday speech. Much nineteen-sixties like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 of the latter can be found, for instance, in (1961), Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire (1962), works like ’s Snow White and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying Lot of 49 (1967), Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in (1966), novels with a clearly anti- America (1967), or Stanley Elkin’s The Dick foundationalist stance. And as to the free play Gibson Show (1971), while the preferred genres of signifiers, where could one study it better ranged from science fiction (as in Kurt than in Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle (1963) and fantasy America from 1967, a novel in which (as in Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon arbitrariness reigns supreme? The exhibition of Sugar, 1968) to the detective novel [eher: arbitrariness was quite obviously also one of the conspiracy thriller] (as in Thomas Pynchon’s objectives of the artists of the time, as can The Crying of Lot 49, 1966) and crime fiction be gathered from the ‘combines’ of Robert or ‘faction’ (Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, Rauschenberg (for instance, his “Monogram” 1966) as well as the western and the horror from 1959), the ‘environments’ of Claes story (Richard Brautigan, The Hawkline Oldenburg (“Four Environments”, 1963) or the Monster, 1974). And I should not forget to ‘assemblages’ of James Rosenquist (“Mixed mention that the popular pattern of the horror Media”, 1963), from ‘Earthworks’ and ‘Land story was used in feminist works like Margaret Art’ like Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” or Atwood’s Lady Oracle (1976), Angela Carter’s Walter de Maria’s “Lightning Field”, and, above The Passion of New Eve (1977), and in all, from most of the works belonging to combination with science fiction in, for ‘Concept Art’ – for instance, the series of random instance, Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of photographs by Vito Acconci or John Dribbet. Darkness (1975) and Marge Piercy’s Woman The radical relativization of validity stressed on the Edge of Time (1976). in poststructuralist theory is also a strong

43 feature of earlier postmodern literature and art, One of the most astounding events in the where it takes the shape of irony and self-irony, domain of art was the appearance of the various parody, or travesty. I would just like to recall “Neo”-movements from the late nineteen- ’s parody of Ebenezer Cooke’s seventies onwards. Starting with the neo- verse satire The Sot-Weed Factor (1708) in expressionist painting of the “Neue Wilde”, there his novel with the same title from 1960, or soon reappeared an abstract geometrical art Donald Barthelme’s satirical travesty Snow under the name of “Neo-Geo”, which in turn White (1967). was soon followed by “Neo-Conceptualism”. That a relativizing ironical stance was also Such an open declaration of ‘new’ work as a shared by postmodern artists is shown by the variation and renovation of something already provocative celebration of the banal and the existing had been utterly impossible during corresponding trivialization of the lofty and modernism and actually been barred since dignified, as in many of the paintings of Sandro absolute novelty became a decisive criterion Chia, Enzo Cucchi and Francesco Clemente, of aesthetic quality with the eighteenth-century or the treatment of important German historical conception of the original genius. Suddenly the myths by Anselm Kiefer. minimal difference of mere variation became As is well known, the integration of a self- not only acceptable, but – with its obvious déja- ironical critical discourse in narrative became vu effect – even desirable. It is, for instance, such a typical feature of some postmodern hard, when contemplating Roni Horn’s fiction that one soon spoke of ‘metafiction’ as presentation of two parts of a severed beam a new subgenre. Typical specimens are John (“Parted Mass”) from 1985 to tell it apart from Barth’s novel Lost in the Funhouse and many the works of Carl Andre in the nineteen-sixties, of the postmodern short stories and tales of and frequently we also find ‘quotations’ of Donald Barthelme, Gilbert Sorrentino and earlier styles, as when Gerhard Richter’s Robert Coover. “Strich (auf Rot)” from 1980 alludes to the Metafiction was, however, only one art informel of the 1950s, or even of particular particular kind of the mixing of discourses, works, for instance of Edvard Munch’s “The styles and genre patterns that stood in Scream” (1893) in Enzo Cucchi’s “Paesaggio absolute contrast to late modernist purism. Barbaro” (1983). Other examples include Kurt Vonnegut’s What became visible in the nineteen-nineties Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) with its combination was already the bewildering diversity of styles of historical war novel and science fiction and that still prevails to this day. There were some Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night spectacular events like the covering of the (1968) with its blending of documentary prose Reichstag in Berlin by Christo and Jeanne- and novelistic narration. Claude in 1995, and a predilection for spatial arrangements showed also in the great variety * * * of ‘installations’. Regarding painting, new All these reminders of earlier postmodern art abstract art (to which even someone like and literature are meant only to help us see Georg Baselitz contributed) competed with more clearly how much different was most ‘naive’ realism and the various other kinds of of what came after. ‘realism’ that could be found, for instance, in

44 the exhibition “Radical Realism After Picabia” Wallace, Middlesex (2002) by Jeffrey that was in 2002 first shown in the Centre Eugenides, or The Corrections (2001) by Pompidou and then in the Kunsthalle in Vienna. Jonathan Franzen. In the domain of literature, the changes The novels of Morrison and Erdrich are that occurred in the late nineteen-seventies specimens of the so-called “hyphenated and nineteen-eighties were just as significant. literatures” to which belong, besides African- The most remarkable new development was American and Native-American, also Hispano- the return of more or less ‘realistic’ story- American literature (for instance, the successful telling, something observable on an inter- novel Hunger of Memory (1982) by Richard national scale, although I will take my examples Rodriguez), or Asian-American literature (for from British and American literature. In the instance, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman United States, ‘mainstream American realism’ Warrior, 1977). never stopped flowing even during the heyday The revival of realistic narration in the of postmodernism (as, for instance, the United States meant also a reintroduction of successful series of John Updike’s “Rabbit”- social problems and social criticism such as novels that began in 1960 testifies). Yet with we find it in Franzen’s The Corrections, Philip the ‘minimalist’, ‘dirty’ or ‘new’ realism of Roth’s The Human Stain (2000) and Richard (What We Talk About When We Powers’ The Time of Our Singing (2003). Talk About Love, 1981) and Frederick Barthelme The fact that in the nineties there was still (Moon Deluxe, 1983), comparatively ‘straight’ room for what Hoffmann has called “Strategies storytelling became more widespread again. of Excess”, strategies at work in the 835 pages In quite a few cases the postmodern ‘crisis of Harold Brodkey’s epic adventure in of representation’ still left its traces insofar as consciousness called Runaway Soul (1991) the rendering of reality is made to appear and in the 1079 pages of David Foster doubtful by various means. In novels like Paul Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996) with their Auster’s The New York Trilogy (1985–86) or extreme multi-modality and excessive language E.L. Doctorow’s World’s Fair (1986), the games proves, however, how wide the range account of the past is made to appear of recent writing is. ostensibly imperfect. As Gerhard Hoffmann In Britain, where the postmodern excesses has pointed out in his recent study From were never as massive as in American literature, Modernism to Postmodernism (2005), in many the nineteen-eighties brought a revival of the American novels from the eighties and nineties historical novel that included works with a the reality presented is marked by sudden metahistorical stance aptly called historio- disruptions of continuity that take the form of graphic metafiction. Among them were such a mystery. While this may seem understandable successful novels as Salman Rushdie’s in the works of an African-American writer Midnight’s Children (1981), and Graham like Toni Morrison (for instance, in Beloved, Swift’s Waterland (1983), as well as Julian 1987, and in Paradise, 1997) and those of a Barnes’ Flaubert’s Parrot (1983) and Nigel native American writer like Louise Erdrich (for Williams’ Witchcraft (1987). And it is important instance, in The Beet Queen, 1986, or in to see that in the nineteen-eighties, feminist Gardens in the Dunes, 1999), it surprises in critique of society was also expressed in novels like Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster historiographic metafiction like Maureen

45 Duffy’s Illuminations: A Fable (1991) and Mille Plateaux: capitalisme et schizophrénie Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger (1987). II (1980) appeared in English translations The revival of the historical novel comprised, (Anti-Oedipus, 1977, and Thousand Plateaus: however, also a considerable amount of more Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1980). And in the traditional storytelling, which began already with late nineteen-eighties it showed that after the heyday J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) of a-historical deconstruction the time was ripe for and continued with J.G. Ballard’s Empire of a return to history not only in the novel but also in The Sun (1984), Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s the field of theory. In Britain, with investigations of Ark (1982) as well as Barry Unsworth’s Sacred the early modern construction of the subject and Hunger (1992) and Morality Play (1995) and the legitimizing of power as in Catherine Belsey’s Louise de Bernière’s Birds Without Wings The Subject of Tragedy. Identity and Difference in (2004). Renaissance Drama (1985) the turn became More or less straight storytelling has also quite visible, and with Jonathan Dollimore’s continued through this whole period in the and Alan Sinfield’s critical anthology Political novels of Ian McEwan (from The Cement Shakespeare. New Essays in Cultural Materialism Garden, 1978, to Atonement, 2001) and Martin (1985) the new movement – which was ‘néo- Amis (from The Rachel Papers, 1974, to marxisant’ – also was named. In the United Yellow Dog, 2003). And it has to be noted that States, Stephen Greenblatt with his influential the British equivalents to the American novels study Renaissance Self-Fashioning. From belonging to the “hyphenated literatures”, the More to Shakespeare (1980) had already a few very successful works of the so-called British years earlier initiated a new critical movement ‘diaspora’ writers Kazuo Ishiguro (The with similar aims, yet an even wider inclusion Remains of the Day, 1989) and Hanif Kureishi of cultural history, a movement that in the (The Buddha of Suburbia, 1990), also rely introduction to the periodical Genre form 1980 above all on the persuasiveness of more or he called “New Historicism” and that showed less realistic storytelling. its appeal to a great number of critics when What we find not only in recent art but H. Aram Veeser by the end of the decade also in recent literature is an aesthetic of brought out some of their essays under the minimal and often subtle variation of well- same title. And though this historical turn was known themes and kinds of presentation, and new regarding its particular aims and as such an aesthetic was the dominant one methodology, it was pre-modern in the sense from the Renaissance of the twelfth century that a similar tendency can neither be found in to the end of Neo-Classicism in the late the period of modernism nor in earlier eighteenth century – it may – of course with postmodernism with its slogan (adopted from some reservations – be called ‘pre-modern’. Henry Ford) ‘history is bunk’. In the domain of theory, the influence of The nineteen-eighties were also the time Derrida remained strong, yet with Gilles Deleuze when the earlier feminist Women’s Studies another important figure and theoretical position were completed and replaced by Gender became very influential in the late seventies and Studies with its basic differentiation between eighties after the works he had published biological sex and cultural gender. The together with Félix Guattari, L’Anti-Oedipe: increased interest in the cultural construction capitalisme et schizophrénie I (1972) and of gender difference fitted well into the wider

46 frame of the most comprehensive and influential Geertz and the new American anthropology. theoretical movements after the end of de- Suddenly those who were experts in textual construction: cultural studies and cultural interpretation saw themselves as being history. particularly qualified to interpret not only For with respect to the situation generally literature but also culture. obtaining in the humanities, there seems to be As I endeavoured to show in the 2001 no question that the ‘cultural turn’ has prevailed volume of REAL on Literary History / Cultural for some time now. Already in 1994 the History: Force-Fields and Tensions,3 the sociologist David Charney stated: notions of ‘culture’ in recent and current research are nevertheless anything but uniform, In the second half of the 20th century the theme of ‘culture’ has dominated the human sciences. and this is also demonstrated, for instance, by Concepts of culture have generated perspectives the many relevant entries in the Metzler Lexikon and methodologies that have challenged Kultur der Gegenwart4 and in the quite recent orthodoxies and attracted the energetic monograph by Doris Bachmann-Medick called enthusiasm of young scholars.1 Cultural Turns: Neuorientierungen in den With the increasing sophistication of the Kulturwissenschaften. There is, however, a theoretical base and the growth of practical substantial ensemble of conceptions that are experience, this trend has become even widely shared despite considerable differences. stronger in the meantime. English philology has Culture by now is seen as an historical formation turned into a kind of super-discipline by taking that, despite the hegemonic power structures 5 over, at least in part, the work of sociology, already pointed out by Gramsci, encompasses 6 history, psychology and philosophy, not to multiple forces and positions, as a site of mention media and gender studies. The range forms of ideological and political contestation of possible objects of investigation under the in which – to use the terms introduced by label of ‘culture’ has become almost unlimited. Raymond Williams – dominant, residual and 7 For that reason it seems advisable to limit the emergent forces coexist. This view has led to perspective under which the various features a closer investigation of how cultural formations and aspects of culture are approached. And are stabilized – and I refer to the relevant studies 8 9 because English Studies as an academic of Pierre Bourdieu , Michel de Certeau , Louis 10 11 discipline is language-based, and language is Althusser , Alan Sinfield , and Catherine 12 the most elaborate sign-system we have, the Belsey – as well as to an intensive search for expertise gained in dealing with language, possible and effective counter-measures. language texts and literature appears to be an excellent qualification especially for a semiotic 3 In“Literary History and Cultural History: Relations approach to culture. Such an approach, the and Difference.” treatment of culture as an “ensemble of 4 Ed. Ralf Schnell. 5 Cf. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. 2 texts” , an entanglement of sign-systems was 6 Cf. Greenblatt, Shakespearian Negotiations. widely disseminated in the 1970s by Clifford 7 Cf. Culture and Society. 8 Cf. The Logic of Practice. 9 Cf The Practice of Everyday Life. 10 Cf. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” 11 1 The Cultural Turn, i. Cf. Faultlines. 12 2 See Geertz, “Deep Play.” Cf. “Reading Cultural History.”

47 Culture – though materially manifested and only pointed out the importance of this part of linked to institutions – comes to be investigated culture but also its being largely a construction. in a signifying approach primarily as an Cultural memory then became a favourite field immaterial construct, a web of meanings. In of research in Germany, beginning with some this sense it had already been made the subject groundbreaking works such as the critical of the histoire de mentalités13 with its inquiry anthology Kultur und Gedächtnis (1988), into collective sense-making, and it is also edited by Jan Assmann and Tonio Hölscher, found in Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological focus Mnemosyne: Formen und Funktionen der on “habitus”14 and symbolic exchange15 as kulturellen Erinnerung (1991), edited by Aleida well as in Catherine Belsey’s observation that Assmann and Dietrich Harth, and Jan “cultural history records meanings and Assmann’s Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, values.”16 Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen This is very close to my own view that Hochkulturen (1992). Further investigations culture is above all an ensemble of values17 such as those undertaken on a large scale at which, as Bourdieu has observed,18 form my own university made evident, however, hierarchies and in this way make cultures that even regarding the same country at one special and differ from one another. Such and the same historical moment it is more hierarchies of values only become culturally appropriate to speak of cultures of memory significant by having been collectively than of a single homogeneous culture of accepted. It is therefore necessary to memory. Some of the results of the pertinent investigate a great number of documents from research have been published in the critical various fields of discourse in order to discern anthologies Literatur, Erinnerung, Identität the recurrent validations. In this respect, the (2003), edited by Astrid Erll, Marion Gymnich, study of culture differs significantly from the and Ansgar Nünning, Erinnerung, Gedächtnis, study of literature, for what finally counts in Wissen. Studien zur kulturwissenschaftlichen the latter is the singularity of a particular work, Gedächtnisforschung (2005), edited by Günter a singularity which even allows for a distancing Oesterle, and Literature, Literary History, and from the prevailing hierarchy of values. Cultural Memory which I myself brought out There are several fields within the domain in 2005. of the study of culture that in the past two The strong historical interest that motivates decades have received more attention than such recent work is definitely pre-modernist, others. That one of them is cultural memory even if not pre-modern in respect to late is not surprising after Benedict Anderson in eighteenth century modernization. The same his Imagined Communities from 1983 and Eric can be said for the ethical turn that began when Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger in their The Hillis Miller published his deconstructionist Invention of Tradition from the same year not Ethics of Reading (1987) and such humanist critics as Wayne C. Booth with The Company 13 Cf. Le Goff, Histoire et mémoire.f. We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (1988), David 14 Cf. The Logic of Practice. Parker with Ethics, Theory and the Novel 15 Cf. “The Market of Symbolic Goods.” 16 “Reading Cultural History”, 107. (1994) and Leona Toker with Commitment in 17 Cf. Grabes, “Culture – Semiotic System and Myth.” Rflection: Essays in Literature and Moral 18 Cf. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Philosophy, edited in 1994, began doing what

48 philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre had published in 1992 in English translation under started with his widely acclaimed study After the title “This Strange Institution Called Virtue (1981) and what Charles Taylor with his Literature,” he argued that it is the “suspended Sources of the Self (1989), Richard Rorty with relation to meaning and reference” that gives to Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), literature “in principle the power to say Martha Nussbaum with Love’s Knowledge everything, to break free of the rules, to displace (1990) and Zygmunt Baumann with his them, and thereby to institute, to invent and Postmodern Ethics (1993) continued. That in even suspect the traditional difference between the nineteen-nineties the ethical turn had nature and institution, nature and conventional definitely also taken place in the domain of law, nature and history.”20 Literary discourse thus literary criticism and theory can be derived from opens up, inhabits and circumscribes a free space the appearance of such critical anthologies as within culture, a space for that “free play” within Ethics and Aesthetics: The Moral Turn of the interaction between the fictive and the Postmodernism (1996) or The Ethics of imaginary that Wolfgang Iser has shown to be Literature (1999) as well as Andrew Gibson’s one of the specific effects of literary texts.21 Postmodernity, Ethics and the Novel (1999). In 1992 Pierre Bourdieu in Les Règles de Since then there have been various attempts to prove l’art: genèse et structure du champ littéraire that even postmodern metafiction has an ethical had sought to delimit what he called “the literary dimension, and as the contributions to a field in the field of power,” a field that is a conference in May 2006 at Giessen on “Ethics “real challenge to all forms of economism” in Culture: The Dissemination of Values through because it “presents itself as an inverted Literature and Other Media” showed,19 the more economic world: those who enter it have an general discussion of the topic has by no means interest in disinterestedness.”22 And Timothy come to an end. J. Reiss, being convinced that “literature alters A further field not much explored during its role, its action, its forms of practice as the modernism, neglected in the period of earlier environment of which it is a part evolves,” in postmodernism, and revived in the nineteen- his study The Meaning of Literature from the nineties in view of the threatening hegemony same year attempted to delineate the genesis and of the study of culture, is the theory of further development of “what we have called literature. In surveying theoretical endeavours ‘literature’” (2–3) from the Renaissance to the to distinguish ‘literature’ in a narrower sense late nineteenth century. from other texts, one will find that some have Subsequently, the increasing dominance of focused on textual features or markers and the cultural paradigm seems to have called others on the professed or assumed relation forth further appeals in favour of literature. In between text and the life-world. With regard 1999 there appeared Peter Widdowson’s to the latter, the most persuasive recent plea Literature in the New Critical Idiom series, a for what has traditionally been called fictionality work in which the author, though still using has, in my view, been presented by Jacques Derrida. In an interview from 1989 that was 20 “This Strange Institution Called Literature”, 48. 21 Cf. “Interplay Between the Fictive and the Imaginary.” 19 They will soon be published under the same title 22 Quoted from the English translation The Rules of with De Gruyter in Berlin. Art, 215–16.

49 the term ‘literature’ in the title, replaces it with and the relativity of all cultures, and in the the label “the literary,” a “working term for process the finitude and relativity of the subject the kind of written discourse I believe has some that is their effect, as well as pointing to a irreplaceable uses in our society” (92). As the relation of difference between language and the real that resides beyond the purview of distinguishing features of literary discourse he culture. (47) regards “its own sense of being of the literary,” its “making ‘poetic realities’,” and – quoting What I have not found in any of these more Althusser – its capacity to achieve “a retreat, recent attempts to differentiate literature from an internal distancing”23 from the ideology other discourses is the very important fact that within which it is held. what we encounter in literature – in contrast To demonstrate the value of what he to philosophy and other kinds of theoretical considers as an endangered species, J. Hillis discourse – is overwhelmingly particular and Miller in 2002 published his On Literature. He even wholly individual: specific places, holds that, owing to “the creation or discovery moments in time, characters with personal of a new, supplementary world, a metaworld, names, idiosyncratic ways of speaking and a hyper-reality,” “all literary works can be acting, thinking and feeling. Literary discourse usefully thought of as a species of magic” (20– renders possible and motivates an imaginary 21) – a species by which the beliefs and experience of the particular in its outer behaviour of readers can be changed. physicality or inner concreteness rather than Not too far away from this view is Derek offering general notions to the reasoning mind. Attridge’s definition of “the literary” as an event The consequence of this presentation of the in The Singularity of Literature, which particular is a confinement of the claim to appeared in 2004. What he considers as the validity of its statements, a validational modesty distinctive feature of literary texts is a which theoretical discourse, due to the general “reformulation of norms,” yet it “is only when nature of conceptual language, hardly ever the event of this reformulation is experienced possesses. And it is an even greater degree of by the reader [...] as an event, an event which validational modesty that differentiates literature opens up new possibilities of meaning and from all narratives with a genuine truth claim, feeling (understood as verbs), or, more especially the otherwise similar narratives of accurately, the event of such opening, that we historical discourse or the more empirical kind can speak of the literary” (59). of sociological and psychological discourse. In In contrast to such focussing on the this respect, literature is ‘only literature’, but individual impact of literary texts, Catherine as the “suspension of reference” renders the Belsey in her essay on “The Possibility of affirmative or negating statements in literary Literary History” highlights their specific texts merely quasi-statements from the point cultural function: of view of epistemology, literature is also far less bound by the cogency of religious, moral, literature confronts the outer edges of language, juridical and other collective norms. And this and thereby the limits of the culture inscribed in language. It thus marks the finitude of all culture, is, of course, an important precondition for the ability of literature to make us aware of

23 “A Letter on Art in Reply to André Daspre” 204, the limits of the culture of its origin and quoted by Widdowson, Literature, 118. indirectly of the boundaries of every culture.

50 One could also say that the cultural value of solidarity and bare-knuckled criticism and literature resides in the function of the analysis (not to forget, however, the persistent seemingly functionless. energy of the writers themselves and the Instead of operating with the dichotomy manipulative genius of the marketplace) that “Culture or Literature,” to me it makes much help keep its singular quality and function in more sense to investigate and historically trace collective memory. the interaction between the wider and the While the topic of the relationship between narrower sphere.24 As I see it, the study of culture and literature can be considered as being the one cannot adequately be pursued without also pre-modern if one brackets the differences taking due cognizance of the other. We cannot in vocabulary, what has to be admitted is that rightfully claim for a literary work any there are also quite important fields of more excellence deriving from its transcendence of recent theory that are definitely not pre-modern. the limits of culture within it was produced What I am referring to are especially the theory without having obtained a wider knowledge of gender and the theoretical reflection implied of that culture through the study of a variety in such fast-growing research areas as of other discourses. Nor can we fully Translation Studies, Media Studies and understand the way in which a culture, despite Intermediality. Yet though one is easily drawn the many control mechanisms operating to into one of these areas, they do not fall into the keep it stable, may yet be changed from within frame of my present topic. without giving due attention to its literature. It will have been noticed, I assume, that as Yet in spite of this important function in the domains of art and literature, there is to literature possesses for the development of be found in our time no hegemony of a culture I think that Hillis Miller is right when particular school, method or aspect of attention he says that the current trend is towards the in the domain of theory. We have largely given study of culture and away from the study of up what Lyotard has called grands récits, literature.25 This has not least to do with the fact overarching stories that comprise all and that literature has been studied in detail for quite everything. Instead, one operates with theories a while and that it takes some ingenuity to come of a medium level of abstraction which are up with something really attractive and novel, closer to the area of the phenomena to be while it looks as if in the field of the study of explained and therefore probably more helpful. culture there are plenty of new research There is, however, one general assumption to opportunities that do not demand so much be found in almost all current theories of intellectual effort. And precisely because of this culture or domains of culture, and that is that situation I would implore you to take good care culture is a construct. For epistemological of literature. There are, after all, also other reasons I would even go one step further and disciplines such as sociology and history in which say that we can consider this as a good culture is studied, while literature in the academy operative principle and leave open the question is entirely at our mercy: it is our spirit, resolve, whether this is ‘really’ so. As research practice shows, this assumption encourages the search not only for the specificity of a particular 24 Cf. Grabes, „Literary History and Cultural History. Relations and Difference.” culture but also for the political and historical 25 Cf. On Literature, 10. reasons why it is as it is.

51 This means that our basic stance in the orientation, as a healing grace it is certainly not domain of theory has remained postmodern – boring and also less compulsive than earlier ages or even become more sceptical and pragmatist – at least in the West. Let us try to make use of than the strong belief in poststructuralist ideas the chances offered by this situation and defend to be found in the earlier phase of postmodernism it if and wherever necessary. really implied. As in the domains of art and literature, this allows also in the domain of theory for a multitude of competing views and models, 26 Under this title Jürgen Habermas in 1985 and if our age is therefore perhaps plagued by a published his attack on the postmodern abandonment “Neue Unübersichtlichkeit”26, a lack of clear of the “project of modernity.”

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Authors’s address: Justus-Liebig-Universität Otto Behaghel-Strasse 10, 6300 Giessen, Germany E-mail: [email protected]

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